


A pint of plain, hold the leeches

by Vana



Category: Game of Thrones (TV), Game of Thrones RPF
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-01
Updated: 2013-02-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 11:41:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/823909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vana/pseuds/Vana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the filming of "Second Sons" (the one with the leeches!), Team Dragonstone goes out for a drink.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A pint of plain, hold the leeches

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hedge_witch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hedge_witch/gifts).



He’d wanted to just go _home_ , wherever home was anymore, that dark impeccable rental so far from the din of his family — but it was home enough after a day like this was. The severity of the scenes they had worked on bore down on Stephen until he couldn’t see past it. All the walls looked like the Dragonstone set and all the lamps shimmered like the blowtorches that flared constantly, heating the room almost unbearably. Stephen had it worst under all that armor; peeling it off later, his sweat slicked the entire inside of the costume. Carice got to have it easy, they all joked: she was naked half the time, and this time Joe was too, and though they were constantly fluffed and buffed by oilers and powderers, scurrying in and out of scene like silent green-screened mice, they still looked a good sight more comfortable than Stephen in his metal and leather and wool.

But there was an unspoken rule, in this business. The more tense a scene was, the more obligated you were to go out with your fellow sufferers and the more drunk you were expected to become. So Stephen followed the other three — Carice, bright and laughing, Joe, sheepish and brash, and Liam, cheerful and irreverent as ever — through the late October night and into the loud, comfortable, low-ceilinged Belfast pub where they often repaired. His head was pounding and he lagged behind the others slightly.

That was all it took for Liam to notice and hang back. “ _Youallrightmate,_ ” he said, running it all together in the way that always made Stephen have to pause a moment and parse out the words. He nodded, unconvincingly. Liam said, “We’ll go on the piss for a bit, then we can go.” 

That somehow reassured Stephen. He downed his first pint easily, his second with the resignation that he would not be returning to his rooms any time soon, the third in a feeble attempt to drown out the banter that was advancing on him with unwelcome haste. 

“And I was so _scared_ ,” Carice was saying to them all, her pronunciation a sharp lilt he had not heard until he had met his first Dutch speaker, “I had to do that whole thing knowing they were there, I couldn’t even really enjoy writhing on top of Joe because they were there, right in the room.”

“Can’t decide if you’re talking about Stephen and me or about the leeches,” rumbled Liam, sotto voce. Carice caught it and laughed long and loud, swatting Liam across the amassing pint glasses.

“Either one really! Scary, wiggly, black things,” she shuddered. “Of course you can’t help but be frightened of Stephen over there all dour and silent and angry … that I would be climbing on top of this young stud …” She pinched Joe on his bright red cheek with a wink. 

“That’s definitely the most action I’ve ever got in this job,” Joe said, slurring a little over the words. “That shit got weird fast.”

Carice and Liam exchanged a look, a bright grin. It was Liam who said it, though. “Hardly the kinkiest thing we’ve ever had to get up to in this job, Carice and me, right love?”

There was something about the way he said that that tightened Stephen’s stomach. “I don’t even want to know,” he muttered. Liam turned to him then just long enough to let on that he’d heard, his eyes warm and smile amused. 

Carice was on to the next topic anyway, which was her prediction of what reaction that scene would get when it aired the next year. “Oh they’ll hate me,” she said, looking positively gleeful at the prospect, “they’ll be calling for my head! It will be fantastic!” The next second she was slipping into character as easily as she slipped out of those red robes; her voice deepened and seemed to shimmer in the air when she said, “What they don’t know is I drink the blood of nonbelievers for breakfast.”

“Bottoms up then,” Joe said after a beat, tossing back another shot. Liam laughed and Carice grinned, back in an instant to the flirtatious brunette and not the red priestess of R’hllor. 

Stephen had to fight back the urge to flee when he noticed that Carice’s Melisandre turn had attracted the attention of a few other patrons. They looked toward the foursome, put their heads together to whisper, then looked again, longer this time. Carice saw them coming and put on her actress face again. Stephen was still so emotionally wrung out from the intensity of the scene he could hardly speak to his companions, let alone strangers right then. He made a small noise of distress in his throat involuntarily, shading himself minutely behind Liam and against the wall. It was not that he didn’t want to be recognized, or that he didn’t appreciate the fans, or even that he wanted to be left alone. It was just that he had nothing left. 

Liam knew it, of course. He telegraphed this somehow to Carice — a negligible motion of the head, perhaps, or a quick knitting together of the brows — and she and Joe stood up to greet the onlookers, heading them off before they reached the table. 

The talk went on as Stephen steadily drank and the room dimmed and warmed around him. Liam never moved from his side, and it must have been very late when he found himself leaning vaguely against the flannel-clad shoulder, hearing the rolling cadence of Liam’s voice very close to his ear and the further-off chatter of Carice, the inexhaustible, and Joe who became louder with each glass of ale, and the distant roar of a late pub. None of it penetrated the haze of contentment, or had any effect on his feeling of security with Liam quiet and solid next to him, a place of refuge in a cold and clamorous world.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Hedge_witch, my enabler and muse of all things Stavos and beyond.


End file.
